


Days of Futures Past

by elrhiarhodan



Series: Deadmarked [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Eobarry, Grief, M/M, Masturbation, Self-Loathing, Slash, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, barrison, eowells - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 11:42:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrhiarhodan/pseuds/elrhiarhodan
Summary: Eobard Thawne (always wearing the face of the man known as Harrison Wells) bears a "deadmark" - a soul mark signifying that his soul mate is not alive in the same time continuum.  Eobard quietly grieves and becomes a Nobel Prize winning scientist for his discoveries in the field of chronodynamics.  What he never tells anyone is that he's pursued this field of study in the hopes that one day, he'll be able to travel through time and find his soul mate.





	Days of Futures Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/gifts).



> Written for Day 1 of the Merry Month of Masturbation, 2017 edition, for the prompt "Past", which was given to me by [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/kyele/profile)[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/kyele/)**kyele** , who wanted achy EoBarry soulmates. I was happy to comply.
> 
> Additional Note (5/4/17): This fic was originally titled "Living in the Past" but I've changed it to Days of Futures Past because all of the other stories in this series have titles based on the classic Moody Blues album, Days of Future Past. Sorry for the confusion.

Eobard rubs at the faded mark on his arm and pulls down his sleeve to hide it. It's ugly – not just for the jagged scrawl of meaningless words, but for everything it represents. Alone in his office, he allows himself to look at it and instantly regrets that choice.

His soulmate is dead in the here and now, and unless Eobard manages to overwrite the laws of physics, he will never meet him.

Fate has a twisted sense of humor. About a third of the population is born with soul marks, another third receive their soul marks when they reach physical maturity, and the remainder have no such marks. 

A small, almost infinitesimal percentage are born with or receive null marks – the mark is appears, but the vibrancy of life is gone and the colors are faded, black, dull. These are the "deadmarked". They are pitied and scorned and avoided at all cost. The deadmarked live empty, unfulfilled lives, stunted by a loss they could do nothing to prevent.

Eobard is sixteen when his soul mark appears; he'd woken up with a sharp pain in his arm, like someone had taken a knife to his skin when he'd been asleep. He'd stared at it in joy, reveling in the knowledge that he had a soulmate, someone who'd love him unconditionally. But when he'd shown it to his parents, his mother claps a hand to her mouth and tears gather in her eyes. His father swallows hard and shakes his head as he apologizes for something he has no control over, "I'm sorry, son. Your soulmate's dead."

Twenty years later, Eobard is still bitter. He might be deadmarked, but his soulmate is alive somewhere in time and Eobard will never meet him. He's a scientist at the top of his field, a Nobel Prize winner and a media darling; a month rarely passes without some appearance by Eobard Thawne on a news outlet explaining the quantum mechanics of time travel. It's not uncommon for some ignorant reporter to ask him why he'd decided to study chronodynamics – a field he'd practically invented. Eobard always answers with a camera-ready smile and a plausible lie. 

He wouldn't dream of telling anyone that he's dedicated his life to studying time travel so he can one day find his soulmate.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Eobard has no real friends; he just has colleagues and peers who look at him with respect and wonder. But he never allows anyone to get close to him. He's learned that when people get close, they become presumptuous; they feel it's their right to ask all kinds of personal questions and when they don’t like the answer, they try and change your mind.

Friends ask the inevitable question about soul marks and soulmates, they want to know all the details. He's learned the hard way never to tell anyone that he's deadmarked – the pity is unbearable. And Eobard can't lie, he _won't_ lie, not about this. He might be a scientist at the pinnacle of his career, but he can't help but feel that if he denies the existence of his soul mark, he'll never find his soulmate. 

_Magical thinking at its worst._

But he refuses to give up hope. Somewhere in time, there is a man who has a dull and faded soul mark; maybe he had been born with it, maybe – like Eobard – it had appeared between one moment and the next, and that man is condemned to a life alone. No one, not even the markless, would enter into any kind of close relationship with someone who is deadmarked.

Of course, Eobard could pay for sex, or go to a club and fuck someone. He could go to an AI parlor and strap himself into a machine and let himself believe a lie for the time it takes between arousal and orgasm. He's done that enough times to know it's no cure for the aching loneliness that keeps him awake, his body aching for the touch of his soulmate.

No, it's better to avoid the plastic reality of anonymous encounters and paid-for sex – real or virtual. The disappointment that always follows makes the loneliness worse.

Tonight, he'll go home and let his imagination wander. Until the dawn, Eobard will live within his imagination, his own hands stroking, touching, exploring, bringing himself to pleasure. He'll build his own reality where his soulmate welcomes him with open arms and touches him with firm and gentle hands. 

Eobard Thawne might be a genius, possessing an unparalleled scientific intellect, but he's also a stubborn dreamer. Somewhere in time, his soulmate still lives, and Eobard refuses to accept that they will never meet, that they'll never have the connection that they were meant to. 

As Eobard falls into a sated sleep he thinks that somewhere in time, someone else is touching themselves and cursing the fate that condemns them to such a lonely life.

__

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow me at my tumblr [Obscene Circus Ponies](http://elrhiarhodan.tumblr.com/), and on my old school (and much beloved) [Dreamwidth](https://elrhiarhodan.dreamwidth.org/) account.


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